An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. / AFP/Getty Images

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

The intention of the chairman of a select committee on Benghazi to bore in on why the United States was "the last flag flying" in the militant-infested Libyan city may reveal what the CIA was doing there and focus on Hillary Clinton's role in the lax security at the U.S. facility where four Americans died.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who was appointed last week to head the House Select Committee on Benghazi, has said he wants to know why the U.S. State Department remained in Benghazi when most other international entities pulled out due to well-known militant activities.

The committee is likely "to dig into what the plan was, if there was one," for a permanent consulate, and to look into what was known about al-Qaeda and affiliated groups in Benghazi before the attack, says Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who has written about extremist networks in North Africa.

Republicans have said that the State Department insisted on a permanent consulate in Benghazi so the Obama administration could claim that the U.S. presence there was evidence that its anti-terror policies in Libya were a success.

Democrats have called the formation of a select committee a political assault on Obama and Clinton, and say most of the questions have already been answered in seven House and Senate committee investigations and testimony provided by the Obama administration.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., says he has not heard any new questions raised that have not been answered. Gowdy says what has not been answered is who at the White House concocted the story that the attack was prompted by a non-existent protest over a movie.

The Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, and later that night on the CIA's "annex" a short distance away, happened after an attempt to assassinate the British ambassador in the city, and two previous attacks on the U.S. facility in the months leading up to the attack that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Some Western countries that had had a presence in Benghazi pulled out before September 2012. According to the Senate Intelligence Report on Benghazi, the European Union, Italy, France, Turkey and Malta remained. Fighters from the city played a major role in the Libyan revolution that ousted tyrant Moammar Gadhafi with NATO and U.S. assistance.

But Benghazi was also an extremist haven, where groups such as Ansar al Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate, operated openly and hosted visits by leaders of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

Part of the answer to Gowdy's question has already been provided by Gregory Hicks, the State Department's deputy chief of mission in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, at the time of the attack.

Hicks told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform a year ago that one reason for Stevens' visit to Benghazi that week was because then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "wanted Benghazi converted into a permanent constituent post," Hicks testified. Stevens was to report before Sept. 30, 2012, on the "political and security environment" in Benghazi, he said.

Prior to that visit, Stevens and others made requests to State for more security based on the attacks and other militant activities. According to testimony, the requests were turned down.

Another aspect of the U.S. presence in Benghazi remains mostly classified and involves the heavily armed and well-guarded CIA compound about a mile from the U.S. diplomatic facility. Twenty-one of the 35 Americans in Benghazi that night were at the compound, which is where the terrorists shifted their attacks to after State's facility was evacuated. Little has been reported about what the CIA was doing in the city.

John Schindler, who teaches about intelligence and national security at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I., wrote on his blog, The XX Committee, that Stevens was caught "flat-footed" in Benghazi because security there was spiraling out of control and also because "most of 'his' Benghazi mission really belonged to other government agencies, with whom coordination of security was problematic."

Joscelyn says the CIA was tracking al-Qaeda operatives and groups in Benghazi, so the Obama administration was aware of the dangerous situation.

Less than three months before the attack, the CIA published an analysis on July 6, 2012, entitled "Libya: al-Qaeda Establishing Sanctuary," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report on the Benghazi attack. In that report, the CIA said that "al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and associates are exploiting the permissive security environment in Libya to enhance their capabilities and expand their operational reach."

Extremists associated with the Muhammad Jamal network in Egypt, AQAP and AQIM that year conducted training, built communication networks and facilitated extremist travel across North Africa from their safe haven in parts of eastern Libya, according to the CIA report.

U.S. intelligence analysts identified members of all three groups as having participated in the Benghazi attack shortly after it happened. That information, however, was not included in talking points provided to then-U.S. ambassador the United Nations Susan Rice before her appearance on Sunday talk shows five days after the attack.